As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Side-channel security attacks can allow operating system (OS) user mode code to access kernel mode memory that may contain secrets like the contents of cache memories, translation lookaside buffers (TLBs) and encryption keys. One solution is to move the secret data to the system's hard disk drive (HDD) before switching to user mode and restoring from HDD upon return from user mode. However, there are drawbacks to this approach. First, it may cause additional wear on the hard drive and significantly reduce its lifetime, particularly in the case of a solid-state disk (SSD). Second, the solution may cause a significant performance impact due to the large access time associated with reading/writing an HDD/SSD.